SpeedBalling

It’s been another year. I wouldn’t call it “good” straight off, but it was something. From smoking crack in the slums of Phoenix, to canvassing for John Kerry, to another failure of an election, and then back into the rat-hole of call-center customer service – it’s been emotional.

Phoenix

Getting coffee. $5.50 for a latte and water. The fire alarm starts going off, but it is met with total apathy. A recorded female voice says “please vacate the area immediately.” No one moves.

More budget work needed. Massive overruns on discretionary spending. Bush and I have something in common – massive debt.

My body craves coke and speed. These desires ARE the source of my suffering, but I have obviously not yet reached the spiritual plane where I can deny them and thus find my inner peace.

“I’m talking about flagellation. Who gives a damn about parades!”

The mail-in-rebate industry is just one example of a larger trend of companies adding outsourced “products” and “services” that provide short term revenue at the cost of customer satisfaction and long term customer loyalty.

“Do I strike you as someone with a high degree of self control?”

bad comedown now
must have more
approaching stop

“Consumer Christianity” – love, money, excess. Biblical porn: “The Second Cumming of Christ.”

Gomahdiarmy.com

Back to Portland

The shooting of Jahar Perez occurred shortly before I returned, and the public inquisition took place in my first week back in town. At the time I was a little strung out on meth and cocaine, and I had nothing better to do, so I decided to go.

There was a kind of irony in the fact that I was doing coke in the bathrooms of the courthouse where they were holding an inquisition into the death of someone who had been murdered by the police as a result of cocaine. Sometimes this made me feel smug, and at other times it made me sick, but most of the time I didn’t feel anything.

A little taste might help. I probably need some more muscle relaxants. I must have something for this anxiety.

Audio tape - recorded directly after shooting…

[Recorded by Dennis Marty, who is narrating as he watches.]

-noise in background

[distraught yelling]
“Haven’t you given him enough yet?”

-Sirens. Another car.

[voice breaking – talking fast]
“Now they’ve been tasing him for about fucking three minutes at least.”

“Guy looks like he’s fucking dead.”

...

“Kerry up 8. With McCaine on the ticket - 18.”

“Kerry should stop wasting time campaigning and start sucking McCaine’s cock.”

What about Bush? He’s probably on his knees right now.

“He could offer to toss McCaine’s salad if he stays off the ticket.”

How about Rumsfeld sucks his [Bush's] cock, while McCaine watches and jerks off. Make it fast – and sexy.

“When he finishes, I want you to say ‘oooh - what a lovely tea party.”

Despite all the wild fantasies being spun across the political columns at the moment the chances of a Kerry/McCaine ticket are nil minus one.

Now I know why the Democratic party can't win any fucking elections.

One evening at work - after I had finished up a day of canvassing - I was sitting outside the office with a co-worker sharing a bowl. One of our fellow employees (who was later promoted to Team Leader) walked up to us, and I asked him how his day had been. He hesitated for a second and then said, “It was great. I laid in a park shooting dope all day.”

United States customs officials say the holiday is a peak for drug smuggling into the United States as crops ripen and drug cartels from Colombia to Mexico rush to get marijuana and cocaine to market.

Holidays Inspire a Rush to the Border (N.Y. Times)

I would like to send a big "FUCK YOU" to the MPAA, which I believe was the primary actor behind the shutdown of TorrentBits, Suprnova, DVDR-Core, Phoenix-torrents, and others over the last week.

I have some free business advice for all of the MPAA's members: make a quality product and people will pay for it. Keep churning out the same shit you are now, and people will pay exactly what it's worth - jack shit. So get fucked, you fucking cunts.

Meanwhile, I strongly encourage everyone to keep in mind that Copyrights are not exactly "god given." They are just some more shit that wealthy elites have successfully lobbied into law.

No one should feel bad about "stealing" any and every bit of corporate copyrighted material that they can get their hands on. Believe me, you're not hurting the "artists" who created these works. At worst you are only hurting the massive media conglomerates, which are themselves the main obstacles to the dissemination of real art.

I don't post anything now because all I would ever post is "work sucks," and I don't think that anybody needs me to tell them that.

I am currently commuting almost four hours a day via public transit, which means that I am spending 12 hours total devoted to employment. For anybody who knows anything about the level of leisure that I am accustom to, it is pretty damn obvious that this kind of schedule does not agree with me AT ALL, and it is a total suck on my will to live.

On top of the work burden, I also have been hitting the slopes way to regularly, and I have some previously committed to contract work that I am still finishing up, which only makes the situation worse. Anyway, I may not be posting regularly for a bit, so sorry...

Week One at the JO was less than inspiring, but I managed to slog it out, which is all I can really ask for.

Meanwhile, the Seattle Post Intelligencer is reporting that Hezbollah TV loses satellite feed to U.S. Apparently the first amendment doesn't apply to arabs anymore.

Who cares? Who the fuck cares? Rights? Constitutional law? Fuck it.

Nobody gets high these days - the lucky just get by.

Today was not one of your more typical A+ days.

I woke up feeling like shit, and while I did have the right medication to address the symptoms, I failed badly in my attempts to cure the disease.

I had to be to work in the wastelands of Beaverton by 1:45pm, which meant boarding the Max at 12:23. Usually I read the N.Y. Times during the course of my hour-and-a-half commute, but they didn't bother to deliver it this morning, so I was fucked on that count as well.

Then, on the Max, I started digging through my bag, searching for a nice 12 hour long lasting Sudafed, but all I came up with was empty left over wrappers - FUCK! No Sudafed! Then, in the tunnel just past the Washington Park stop, the Max slowed to a stop, and the conductor came on the P.A. and announced that another train had broken down on the track, and that we would be delayed for "five minutes."

Five more status reports, and fifteen minutes later, we finally started moving again - at half speed - and by the time we arrived at my stop, my connecting bus was long gone. Cue the frantic cracked-out mile-and-a-half walk to work. Cue dangerously racing heart and pouring sweat.

The work day was dull and annoying, but generally tolerable. When I got off I bought a six pack and headed home (even longer commute).

At home, trying to relax, I decided to scan the headlines at the Guardian, and what did I find?

Indiana Jones leads Hollywood version of battle for Falluja

Oh yeah - Harrison Ford as a Marine, fighting the "terrorists" in Falluja. Doesn't get much better than that.

Erhmmm... The U.S. Military?

This story is fishier than a cannery. The essence, as it has been reported, is that a soldier just pleaded guilty to murder charges for wasting a wounded Iraqi. The devil of this bitch is in the details, which sadly, are beyond my grasp, because I can only run with what the press (A.K.A. the military) is giving me.

What I can muster is that in the course of a patrol, a group of soldiers shot up a garbage truck that they claim was dropping off bombs. They disabled the truck, and it caught on fire. One of the individuals in the truck managed to get out, but was severely burned, and also had wounds from either bullets or shrapnel. One of the soldiers (the one who pleaded guilty to murder) decided that the guy was beyond help, and so he executed him.

Now, I am certainly not trying to say that I condone execution - legal or otherwise - but I don't condone war in the first place, and so, this seems to me to be just more insipid American hypocrisy.

Seriously, if it is OK to open fire on the garbage truck, and burn and maim its occupants in the first place, then how is it any worse to finish the job, and expedite the inevitable?

I don't know what really happened, but if the soldier involved is telling the truth - that the guy was done for anyway - then what he did is no crime. The real criminals are the ones who ordered our soldiers onto the battlefield in the first place.

Flipping through blogs, I ran across Nebur's World, the log of a criminal defense attorney working in Methdesto Cali, who calls himself the "DUI Fighter."

Can't get much more pimp than that - but it does!

He has a feature on his blog that he calls "Puto of the Week," and his inaugural puto is none other than Alberto Gonzales.

Now I know who to call if I ever get busted in Modesto.

Browsing Ebay the other day, looking for a new stun gun, I happened to run across this auction listing for a "cattle prod," which features some very disturbing pictures of a man - presumably the seller - posing with said "cattle prod." Check it out, it's funny as hell.

Electric Magic Shock Cattle Prod High/Low Set

"I think he's been an embarassment to the supreme court"

--Harry Reid to Tim Russert on why he wouldn't consider him for Chief Justice

This is from some magazine called Rolling Stone that I had never heard of before.

Why the excitement? Have I just had a breakthrough on the librarian front?

No. Sadly no. Nothing quite that exciting.

Actually, my ass is back in the gainful employment business, which isn't really a good thing vis-a-vis my laziness, but it is good news for my beleaugered pocket book, not to mention my many and varied creditors.

For some reason, Mallinckrodt never responded to my unsolicited offers to become a Quality Control Agent and Product Tester for them, so I didn't exactly get my dream job.

Instead I will once again be a call-center CSR. But that isn't half bad, as I can do the job in my sleep, and more importantly, in many creative states of wakefullness.

I ask you "do you go to an interveiw for a job dressed in jeans and a T-shirt?" No, you wear those nice black slacks with a clean button down shirt even if its McDonalds cause you arnt going to lose points for looking too good and it may be what makes the difference between you and the last resume.

Same thing here. Stand out from the crowd of methamphetamine criminals, give the impression that you are one of that 3% that actually recovers...

In this world, God is Drugs. Scag is His Son. God has sent His Son to the earth to spread the Word. The Word is that Scag is good. Scag is our shepherd. We shall always want. You and the other apostles are spreading the Word to the uninitiated like Robyn, who is now, whether she knows it or not, in the fold.

Yesterday was the six-month marker for Speedballing and I had some big plans for long hate filled posts, but sadly, events got in the way. First, The Return of the Kings: EE was released, which sucked 4+ hours out of my day, and then I started reading Buffalo Soldiers, which did in the rest of the day, and kept me up till about 3:30 in this a.m. finishing it.

Buffalo Soldiers, it turns out, is a fucking fantastic book. If you have seen the movie, then you will know that it is heavily focused on the themes of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Self-Destruction - my favorites.

The book beats the living shit out of the movie, because it turns out that the movie is mostly composed of the happy fluffy moments from the book, with much of the darker material left out. [and it was called a "dark" comedy] As a result the book actually has a point, and a sensible conclusion, instead of the happy ending romantic comedy bullshit from the movie.

Breaking a long streak of laziness and apathy, I decided to take a bus over to the Parry Center to join in solidarity with the striking workers who are picketing there.

Despite the bitter cold the couple dozen employees who were there were boisterous and friendly, and all of those who I spoke to thanked me for coming out.

While I was there a steady stream of passing drivers honked in appreciation, and the demonstration of community support definitely seemed to buoy the morale of the strikers.

I would strongly encourage everyone to go down, say hi, and make sure that the workers on the lines know that you support them. Even if you're not a union member - I'm not - a victory for labor is a victory for every worker, and solidarity is essential, especially during a strike.